


Moving On With Words

by oursolemnhour49



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, mentioned character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:58:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oursolemnhour49/pseuds/oursolemnhour49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson can't move on from the jump, the press, the questions. He doesn't understand how everyone else around him has. And in a quiet bar at night, he encounters someone else who's in the same position. Crossover with Elementary, no pairings, post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving On With Words

He could not understand people, John decided. Or to be more precise, he could not understand their ability to keep going and keep moving past a tragedy. Mycroft had come to the funeral and disappeared as soon as the service had ended. Mrs. Hudson recalled her old tenant fondly, and that in and of itself was a sign she had moved past the grief. Lestrade was too buried in work to pay much attention, and he was under considerable scrutiny due to his connections with Sherlock in the first place. They all had reasons, good ones, to keep going and continue living. But John could not find any reason, good or bad, to shake his melancholy.

He ordered another whiskey. The bar itself had an empty feeling. It was the middle of the week, and there were no raucous gatherings or carousing voices. Just the football matches on screen, the bartender, and a few lost souls who huddled in various booths. Over in the far left corner of the room, close to the backroom doors was an old man staring vacantly out into space. His hands were shaking as he raised his glass to his lips. Perhaps that was nerve injury, or maybe he had just had too much that night. Sherlock probably would have been able to tell at a glance. 

“He has Parkinson’s, I think.” 

The quiet American voice seemed to have come out of nowhere. John jostled his glass, quickly steadied himself, and turned towards the woman who had spoken. She was Asian, rather small, with long smooth dark hair and an elegant face. Her eyes were sharp and focused, but were faintly shadowed. From the slump of her shoulders, he guessed that she was suffering from jet-lag. 

She had kept one stool between herself and him whenever she had sat down. The bartender handed her a drink, which meant she must have been there for a little time. 

He had never noticed. 

“Sorry,” he said aloud. “You were saying something about Parkinson’s.”

“That guy you were staring at. Over in the corner. He has the early symptoms.”

Parkinson’s, of course. John mentally kicked himself for not noticing the man’s lack of blinking and blank face. “You’ve got a good eye.”

She shrugged and took a long slow sip of the hard cider in front of her. “I used to be a surgeon, and I’ve had some practice picking out other diseases.”

“Really?” John paused, wondered whether to go on, and decided that he might try to have a conversation. He ordered a refill of his whiskey and took a deep breath. “I’m medical too.”

“Are you?” She turned more fully towards him, and her dark eyes raked him up and down in a way uncomfortably familiar. “Were you military?”

John gave a short laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

She smiled bitterly. “I caught a glimpse of old ID in your wallet when you ordered.”

“Oh.”

She looked at him more closely. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I know some people can get freaked out when I do that- it was just part of my job.” She took another sip of her drink and her voice shook a little. “I’m having trouble shaking the habit.”

“No,” John said quickly. “It’s not you- it’s just- I had a friend who was- um, who was very good at that kind of thing. Reading people, telling things about them from the details.”

There was a short silence. 

“I had a friend like that too,” the woman said softly. She sounded as though she was suppressing a well of grief equal to John’s, and when he turned to her, her eyes were glittering. But she did not let any tears fall, and after a moment or two she regained her composure. “He’s actually why I’m in London now. I had to go find his family.”

John felt the old ache surge. He knew that tone of voice, he knew that feeling of being lost and bewildered. “Did something happen?”

She looked at the counter. “He died.” 

Her voice sounded cold, but her whole body was tense, as though she was fighting to remain steady under a horrible burden.

Another sip of the whiskey, and suddenly John wanted to just talk. She’d been hurt in a similar way, even if he didn’t know the particulars, and that made her a better candidate for understanding than any of his therapists. “My friend died too,” he said, and did not even try to hide the quiver in his voice. “He died- letting everyone think he’d done something horrible. And I know- I know he didn’t do that. And I can’t prove it and I can’t talk about it. But I can’t let it go.”

“What happened?”

He told her. In a rushed low whisper that was choked every few words as he tried to keep his voice from rising in emotion. He told her about the trial, the capture, the deception, the constant lies, the call, the final, desperate leap, the verdict of disgraced suicide. 

Something in the back of his mind told him that he’d had far more that night than he thought, but that didn’t stop the words. They had to come out, and it seemed fitting, in a strange way, that this woman in this quiet bar should hear them.

“I’m sorry,” she said after he had stopped speaking. “I know what that feels like.”

“Do you?” 

He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but she didn’t seem offended. 

“Yes,” she said simply.

After another long silence, she downed a large sip of her drink, and continued. 

“My friend was a drug addict. I met him when I was assigned to be his sober companion. He got better. He taught things- ways to see the world, new ways to help people, different kinds of help. It was incredible. With him I was doing things that were so worthwhile- that could take everything I’d learned at that point in my life and use it all together. He was incredible. He was smart, difficult, and… I miss him. And I can’t believe, no matter how many times I see the evidence, that he would do what he did.”

John looked at her and recognized the disorientation that came with the loss of someone unique. He knew how a person could uproot one’s world, throw back it together in an entirely new order, and shatter it just as suddenly. “What did he do?”

“There was a car crash.” Now the woman’s voice was trembling, and he realized that she had not spoken to anyone either, and her words had to be heard. “It was a huge pileup and there were a lot of injuries. But only two people died. One of them was my friend.”

She drew a shuddering breath. When she spoke again her voice was steadier, but her heart sounded utterly broken. “When they found him, there were drugs in his system and there was heroin in his car. And I don’t believe it. Even though the evidence is all there, staring in my face in those stupid plastic bags, I don’t believe that he fell off the wagon. I think there was something more that nobody knows. And I have to figure it out because it’s killing me to think that people aren’t going to know what kind of person my friend was. And I can’t. Figure it out, I mean.”

He looked at her face, her hands, and her set shoulders, and felt closer to her than he did to any other human being. They were two people, caught in the whirlwind of another person’s making, who could not leave the past alone because the past simply was not right. The evidence might add up, but the picture was wrong, and because the wrongness was so complete and so pervading, no one knew but himself and this other woman. Even though they came from opposite sides of the ocean and would never see other again after they passed through these doors, he could look at her, and she could look at him, and they both would understand each other better than anyone else could know.

Then the bartender stopped to tell them it was closing time, and the spell was broken. The woman gathered her purse, and John gathered his coat, and they both headed for the door without a word. 

They were out in the parking lot, heading for their respective routes home, and yet they were both slow, both trying to determine what had been left unsaid. They would not see each other again, and there had to be some acknowledgment of that that was not too obvious.

The woman was the one who solved the problem. “What’s your name?”

“John, John Watson. And you?”

She smiled, still sad, but without the sting of bitterness. “Funny. I’m a Watson too. I’m Joan.”

“It was good to talk to you, Joan.”

“Thanks, and same to you, John.” A cab pulled up, and she waved it down and opened the door. “Good luck with everything.” 

He nodded. “You too.”

She stepped into the car, and closed the door. It pulled off into the quiet night, and John walked home alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly a writing study of the interaction of both Watsons, and probably won't go much further. If I was going to do both sets of Holmes/Watsons in the same universe, it would likely be VERY different (conspiracies and sci-fi nonsense). Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed. Thank you for reading!


End file.
